‘Did he say why?’
‘Nothing that I could really get hold of. You know he spoke English quite well, but he was liable to get a bit incomprehensible when he was excited. He repeated two or three times that he didn’t want the room and he was sure there were many people who deserved it more than he did – which was true enough in a way. Right at the end, when he saw that I wasn’t going to change my mind, he did say something which I thought rather odd—’
‘Yes?’ said Goyles.
‘He shrugged his shoulders, in a sort of resigned way, and said, “To think that I had only myself to blame for coming here.” I said, “I suppose we might all of us say that.” He said, “Ah, but I’m the only one of you who actually prayed for my move.” Then he went out.’
‘Are you sure he said “prayed”?’ said Goyles.
‘It was either “prayed” or “paid”,’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘It didn’t seem to make a lot of sense either way.’
5
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6TH, AT 8.30 IN THE EVENING
Positively the first performance in Campo 127
(And probably the last)
THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET
(A Comedy in Five Acts, by Rudolf Besier)
with the following Distinguished Cast:
As Elizabeth Moulton-Barrett – Your favourite star - Captain the Honourable Peter Perse
As Robert Browning Lieutenant - Rupert Rolf-Callender
As Edward Moulton-Barrett, that accomplished character actor (remember The Man Who Came, to Dinner!) - Captain Angus Abercrowther
And full supporting cast
‘Roll up in your thousands’
There was no need for the last exhortation. The theatre hut had a maximum seating capacity of two hundred and tickets were strictly rationed. A seat in the front row was reserved for the Camp Commandant. (He liked to attend all such functions; though in view of the nature of some of the jokes in the previous Christmas pantomime it was perhaps fortunate that his knowledge of colloquial English was limited.)
The Old Hirburnian Rugby Football Club occupied a block at the back of the hall, and, in the interval before the curtain went up, seemed to be continuing an argument from some earlier occasion.
‘Anyone with an elementary knowledge of tactics,’ said Tag Burchnall, ‘would see at once that no general would land his forces at the toe of Italy when he could just as easily land them half-way up.’
‘It isn’t only a question of landing them,’ said Gerry Parsons. ‘You must remember that you’ve got to supply them, too. From a logistical point of view the further south the better.’
‘All you’ve got to do is land a force half-way up the peninsula, on both sides, and you’ll cut off half the German Army.’
‘Then why not land at the top of the peninsula and cut it all off?’ said Rollo Betts-Hanger.
‘Logistics—’
‘The obvious place to land a large force is Ancona. There’s practically no tide in the Adriatic—’
‘Lines of supply.’
‘On the other hand, if they establish their forward base in Northern Corsica and land between Livorno and La Spezia, that gives them a straight run to the Po Valley at Modena— ’
‘Certainly no further north than Naples.’
‘Here comes old Aletti,’ said Burchnall. ‘I suppose it would be a civil gesture if we all stood up.’
6
‘Why the devil didn’t someone think of it before?’ said Rolf-Callender.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s the window at the back – you know Mr Barrett has to throw it open just before the final curtain. Now it seems it can’t be opened.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘When we put the set in we put it too far back. It jams on that side beam.’
‘Has anyone got a saw?’
‘What are you going to do? For God’s sake don’t bring the whole thing down.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Captain Abercrowther, who had removed his morning coat and rolled up his sleeves. ‘I’ll just take a bit out of the end of that cross beam, knock it along a trifle, and then the window will open fine.’
He was far too old a hand at amateur theatricals to let a contretemps of that sort worry him. In his experience it would only have been surprising if nothing had stuck at the last moment.
‘Astounding,’ said Colonel Aletti, as the curtain fell for the first interval, ‘such acting, such décor. And that young lady on the ottoman, is she in reality one of your officers?’
‘Indeed, yes,’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘I’m glad you are enjoying it.’
‘It seems unbelievable,’ said the Commandant. ‘The voice – the gestures – so anatomically correct. Will there be rapine?’
Colonel Lavery cast his mind over the plot. ‘So far as I can remember,’ he said, ‘the ardours in this play are more poetical than physical.’
‘Incredible,’ said Colonel Aletti. ‘Incredible. And the enthusiasm when the name of Italy is mentioned!’
‘Incredible,’ agreed Colonel Lavery.
‘Damned good,’ said Goyles, as the curtain came down for the second interval.
‘It really is extraordinary,’ said Byfold, ‘what a complete twerp a chap can be off the stage and how damned entertaining when he’s on it.’
‘I can’t take my eyes off that dog,’ said Long. ‘Every time he wags his tail I’m sure it’s going to fall off. And it beats me how they keep him from licking off his make-up. Are we going out for a quick breather?’
Though all the windows were open the packed hut was as hot as an oven.
‘We’d better stick it out,’ said Goyles. ‘We’ll never get in again if we move.’
The play had come to its tremendous last minute. The lovers had stolen away. The empty room at Wimpole Street had filled with members of the Barrett family. Last of all had come Edward Moulton-Barrett – papa in person.
Captain Abercrowther, who really was an actor of considerable parts, had his hand by now on the pulse of the audience. For those few minutes belief was suspended, and the hatred, fear and pity of two hundred souls was following him as he walked to the window at the back.
In a moment the curtain would fall, illusion would depart and the present would rush back.
As he laid his hand on the casement window he sensed that it was going to prove difficult to open. He thought for a moment of abandoning the gesture. It would be almost as effective if he simply stood with his back to the audience, staring out of the closed window. Then he took a grip of himself, seized the bottom of the window, and threw it up. It resisted; then, when he applied his strength to it, it came with a rush.
At this moment, unperceived by anyone in the theatre but himself, the amazing thing happened.
As the window came up, a small square of boards at the very back of the stage, behind the back-cloth hinged downwards. A beam from the overhead spotlight shone straight through this cavity and lit up the shaft beneath it. It lit up also what lay at the foot of the shaft, and with incredulous eyes Captain Abercrowther picked out the word IMPAIR in red on a green background.
He realised that he was looking directly down at a roulette board.
Behind him the curtain fell to a solid roar of applause.
Chapter 13
The Wheels of Circumstance
1
‘If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,’ said Colonel Baird, ‘I should never have believed it.’
It was nine o’clock on the following morning and the Escape Committee, with Goyles and Abercrowther in attendance, were examining, behind carefully locked and guarded doors, the stage in the Theatre Hut.
‘It was some finale,’ agreed Colonel Shore. ‘I thought you seemed a little anxious to head-off the Commandant – otherwise I didn’t spot anything particularly wrong.’
He referred to a difficult moment on the previous evening when Colonel Aletti, who had evidently planned to congratulate Elizabeth Browning persona
lly, had been kept with some difficulty from the stage.
‘How does it work?’ said Colonel Baird.
‘What actually happened, I think,’ said Captain Abercrowther, ‘was that, when we were originally fixing in part of the set, we put it too close to the framework at the back of the stage and the window wouldn’t open. At the last moment I had to shorten and lower one of the side stays. I was cutting the end off with a saw about five minutes before the curtain went up. You may have heard me. Even then we couldn’t lower the window until I’d knocked this bit of bottom studding along about six inches’ – he demonstrated. ‘You see what happens. It looks like studding, but it’s really the bolt which keeps this little trap-door shut.’
‘Then from the moment you did that there was nothing keeping it up at all?’
‘No, except that it was a tight fit. The jerk I gave to the window was the only thing which finally loosened it. It just fell open.’
‘Yes,’ said Colonel Baird. He was standing on the stage, straddling the trap-door, staring down into the shaft. What had looked, in the dark and from below, like a partial collapse of the tunnel roof, was now only too obviously man-made. The trap-door was skilful enough, but apart from that there had been no attempt at concealment. The excavated sand lay in heaps under the back of the stage.
‘Who do you imagine—?’ began Captain Abercrowther, and caught Goyles’ eye and stopped.
‘Look here,’ said Baird. ‘You’re a bit of a carpenter, Abercrowther. If I get a small party in here to shovel back the sand into the shaft, could you fix this trap-door so that it can neither be opened nor spotted?’
Captain Abercrowther nodded.
‘And if you gentlemen would come with me for a moment, I think I’d like a word with you about this.’
Goyles waited to see if he was being included in the invitation. When he saw that he was not, he had to make a very quick decision.
What he did was to move across, catch Colonel Baird as he was about to leave the hut, and say something to him.
Colonel Baird looked startled.
‘I take it you know what you’re talking about,’ he said.
‘I’ll explain as soon as I can, sir,’ said Goyles.
Colonel Baird hurried after the other members of the Committee and Goyles walked slowly back to his own hut. Although his body moved with deliberation his mind was at stretch.
The first person he looked for was Doctor Simmonds, whom he found in his room turning over the pages of a six months’ old copy of The Lancet.
He came straight to the point.
‘You examined Coutoules’ body, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘Did you have the opportunity to do it thoroughly?’
‘Reasonably so,’ said Doctor Simmonds cautiously. ‘I had one quick look at him when you first discovered the body. Then the Italians gave me a further opportunity of examining him when he was brought up for the second time – largely, I surmise, to make certain that I should agree with their own diagnosis.’
‘What was the exact cause of death?’
Like most doctors when asked this particular question, Doctor Simmonds took a few moments off for thought.
Then he said: ‘Asphyxiation caused by sand. There was sand in the stomach and in the trachea – a little in the lungs – not very much. You wouldn’t expect much. The reflex would have kept it out until the moment he lost consciousness.’
‘It wouldn’t have been possible to fake that effect after he died from some other cause – shock or heart failure?’
‘You mean by pouring sand into his mouth?’
‘Yes.’
Doctor Simmonds considered the suggestion carefully and shook his head. ‘Quite impossible. You wouldn’t get any sand into the stomach at all, if he was already dead. Or it would be very difficult. You’d need a force-pump to get it down, and that would leave obvious signs.’
‘Was there anything,’ said Goyles, ‘anything out of the ordinary at all? Anything that shouldn’t have been there if he simply died under a fall of sand? Was there anything to suggest – I don’t want to put ideas into your head you know – but was there anything at all to suggest that he might have been killed by being held face downwards in sand?’
‘How exactly do you visualise it being done?’
‘If I am right the operation would have been carried out by two or three men – men who wouldn’t make any very obvious mistakes – I mean they would know about postmortem bruising and that sort of thing. I thought that one of them might perhaps have got hold of each of his arms by the sleeve of his coat and twisted his arms behind his back to force his head down and prevent him moving, whilst the other would press his head down into the sand—’
‘Hold it a moment,’ said the doctor. ‘That rings a bell. I’ll just have a look at the notes I made at the time.’ He took a notebook out of the drawer of his desk and turned the pages –’ ‘Yes, I thought so. There was a slight but distinct marking on the nape of his neck. I discussed it with that professor and we rather assumed at the time that it was done by a stone in the sand which fell on him—’
‘But it might equally have been a hand holding him.’
‘More probably, I should say.’
His next visit was to the Quartermaster.
‘You remember,’ he said, ‘some weeks ago, getting hold of one of the Italians for me – a chap called Biancelli—?’
‘The one that shot himself?’
‘The one that was said to have shot himself,’ amended Goyles. ‘But that’s not the point at the moment. It’s the other man.’
‘The other man?’
‘When you found out about Biancelli for me, you told me the name of the carib who was with him – I think it was Marzotto. Could you fix it for me to have a word with him?’
Captain Porter looked doubtful.
‘I wouldn’t ask you,’ said Goyles, ‘only it’s hideously important.’
‘Of course I’ll do it for you if I can,’ said Captain Porter. ‘It isn’t that – but I’ve got a sort of feeling – wait here a moment, would you?’
He was back inside five minutes.
‘You’re out of luck,’ he said. ‘Marzotto left with the other bunch of thugs when Mussolini fell. I fancied I remembered the name. He was the only carib who went with them.’
‘Thank you,’ said Goyles.
Although he was well aware that time was running against him, he hesitated before taking the next step. He stood for quite ten minutes watching a basketball match, which was being contested with more venom than science, on the dust pitch between A and B Huts. Outwardly, the microcosm was unchanged. It was underneath the surface that the sands were shifting and the currents running.
Not so far under the surface, either, thought Goyles. He walked across to the Infirmary Hut. Its only occupant was Hugo Baierlein. The health as well as the morale of the camp was evidently on the upgrade. The beds, which were usually all occupied, were now empty. Even Baierlein was out of bed. He was hobbling very slowly across the floor, both legs swaddled in plaster.
‘I’ve been across the room four times,’ he announced. ‘I feel like a very old, very depraved man with the gout which his forefathers have visited upon him.’
‘Good show,’ said Goyles. He sat on the bed for a moment swinging his legs, and Baierlein, having finished his fifth crossing, came to rest opposite him.
‘What’s on your mind?’ he asked.
‘I’d like to put a question to you,’ said Goyles. ‘I just want an honest, unbiased opinion. I wouldn’t bring this up if it wasn’t so desperately important, and you’re the only person left who can give me an answer.’
‘Go on.’
‘When you were going up the ladder that night – you and the others, and the searchlights came on again and the machine guns opened up – did you think it was a ghastly fluke – or did the thought come into your mind that you might have been given away?’
It was some time before Baierlein spoke, and when he did so
he did not appear to have heard the question.
He said, ‘Alec was to go first up the ladder, then Grim. Desmond was next and I was last. We were all lying out in the deep shadow between the Theatre Hut and the Chapel. It’s one of the places no searchlight can reach. We had fifteen yards of open to cover before we reached the wall. We lay in reverse order – that is to say, I was nearest the wall, Alec furthest away. That was so that when we came to the wall the first man could throw the ladder up and steady it, whilst the back men went up it first. Immediately the arc lights started to dim we got going. I’ve never moved faster in my life. I swear we had the ladder in position before the searchlights started to fade.’
‘I estimated there was about two seconds interval between the arc lights and the searchlight,’ said Goyles.
‘Then it proves you can go fifteen yards in two seconds if you really try,’ said Baierlein. ‘I felt at that moment we were going to pull it off. I was half-crouching under the ladder, holding it, and Desmond was standing on the foot of it. Grim was half-way up and Alec – he could have got away altogether, you know, if he’d just considered himself – was lying on the wall, holding the top of the ladder. Then the fresh searchlights came on.’
He paused again.
‘I don’t think any of us moved whilst you could count five. The searchlights were flicking about all over the place, but not systematically, and too fast to be much use. I couldn’t see what happened next, but I fancy Alec got up to jump – anyway he must have moved. All the lights swung round at us and the shooting started. Alec rolled off the wall, right on top of me. I think he was dead before he fell. Grim tried to go on up the wall – he got up about three rungs before they finished him. Desmond was on the ground. I didn’t even know I’d been hit till I tried to move.’
‘I see,’ said Goyles. ‘So you think—?’
‘I’ve thought about it, on and off, ever since. I can’t honestly come to any other conclusion. They weren’t expecting us. They were alert, and quick on the trigger – and when they did spot us they did a lot more shooting than was necessary. But I don’t think they were waiting for us. If they had been – if they’d known what was happening and where it was going to happen – they’d have had plenty of time to get the searchlights on to us after the arc lamps went out and before the searchlights themselves were cut.’
Death In Captivity Page 18